Cleit
A Cleit (plur. Cleitean) is a stone cottage, only on the islands and STACS the archipelago of St. Kilda , occasionally to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland can be found are counted. There are 1260 Cleitean on Hirta and another 170 on other islands in the group. While many have survived, they are slowly decaying.
The offshore island of Boreray is home to the Cleitean MacPhàidein, a "Cleit village" with three small huts. As a result of an outbreak of smallpox on Hirta in 1727, three men and eight boys were abandoned on the Stac an Armin off Boreray until the following May.
On St. Kilda, which is treeless, the islanders used the wind that blew through the crevices of the drywall to preserve food by drying it rather than smoking it or curing it . The Cleitean were used to store or dry products such as:
- Fishing gear
- fertilizer
- Eggs (buried in peat ash)
- fish
- plumage
- Grain
- hay
- Potatoes
- Lamb
- Ropes
- Seabird carcasses
- peat
- Cleitean
In his book on St. Kilda, David A. Quine writes of the Cleitean: “They come in many shapes and sizes, but all have dry stone walls for the wind to blow through and large flagstones for the roofs, which are covered with turf. to absorb the water ”. Norman Bissett, who left St. Kilda in 1999, wrote: “The wind hits the walls, lifts the straw, makes a storm. Crabs, field mice and crawling animals seek refuge in the cleits, abandoned huts and in the church. "
Typically, Cleitean are found on hilly terrain and are arranged along the slopes with their fronts uphill and their rounded rear ends downhill. Occasionally the entrance is in a side wall. There are also examples of cleits built in the direction of the slope with the entrance on one of the narrow sides. In order to be able to withstand the downward thrust, the end facing downhill is usually designed in the form of an apse with strong support. Entrances are very rarely placed in the apsidal end so as not to reduce its strength.